Noticing my checking of vids of Wimbledon, Youtube has been serving up far too many excerpts of tennis for my own good but I’ve got a bit of a fascination with how the game has changed. Anyway, this is as good footage as I’ve seen of how different the game was in the days of grass courts and wooden rackets. It was the tail end of an era in which Australia and the US dominated world tennis, Australia with a particular style of serve/volley tennis. One’s first volley was the foundation of one’s game – I think Pat Cash was the last of them really – so it’s not surprising he won at the last major grass court tournament left Wimbledon. (Pat Rafter was the same I guess, but sadly he fell in the final at Wimbledon after gripping battles – twice). Anyway, the other thing that jumps out is how much more rhythm there was to points. Which is lucky for Rosewall (and of course for us), because I doubt we’d have heard of him in the age of larger metal racquets.
